Mick Middles

It is the flagship release of his Factory 4 record label ... a whole mass of Salfordian rap. Fast, ferocious, brash and street deep. Three steps beyond grey pallor and gold chains ... deep into the parochial rap beyond Chav. I stare at it in awe. How can a music form seem so alien? And me ... who once bounced to Grandmaster Flash! Tony, I tried to play this thing on three occasions, last night. At one point, I felt like rushing out and grabbing the first Nike and Burberry clad oik who sauntered sullenly by, en route to dropping a ketchup-smeared burger carton on my lawn ... thought I'd grab him and force him to listen. See if he smiles. A five star review for a big beam. If he just looked at me in a state of total miscomprehension, give it one star and consign it to the bulging rubbish bins of rap.

Once past Dizzee Rascal, I don't really go there, to be honest. Rap is the one kind of music that makes me want to wear beige, eat sausage and chips. Nothing else makes me feel that way. Not death metal. Not thrash. Not even the tepid soul that masquerades as R'n'B. Not even faux Manc tripe, which is good only for enraging smug Liverpudlians. But I can't grasp the rap. Not any more. And not on Factory 4. (And another thing about Factory 4. It is, Mr Wilson keeps stating, predominantly a 'download' label. This may be rather clever. I am told that, in these days when you only need to sell 13 singles to be granted a top 10 hit, that it's possible to use the download scam to push something chartbound. Not, of course, that anyone takes the remotest interest in the single charts any more. I don't anyway. So I don't play Raw T. I don't need to. There was a time when a new Tony Wilson band would be granted such instant hipness that, regardless of what it actually sounded like, it always proved worthwhile just to leave it in view somewhere, on coffee table or car seat, just so that any passing eyes would believe me to be so effortlessly hip. This doesn't work with Raw T. I left it on the car seat and my neighbour, a landscape gardener named Bob, just glanced at it with a look of mild disdain. Then again, he is a fan of jazz and opera. Perhaps not central to Raw T's catchment area.

Raw T can thunder away to their hearts content. I shall just eat my sausage. For more information, visit factoryfour.com

Ok. Here is a confession. I do like a bit of the bizarre. This is, I hasten to add, a musical confession and not a sexual one. While ignoring Raw T, last week, I chanced upon another recording from a Manchester label, the increasingly curious Storm Music. I am not sure why, but I have loved everything they have released thus far, even if it seems to hate a roster so disparate that it's difficult to capture the essence of a label. Beyond, that is, a label that produces music that instantly twists away from the norm while remaining hugely accessible. One such artist is David Wrench. He is, indeed, bizarre. To encounter him on the street is to look up and blink. As a 6ft 7ins Albino from Bangor who specialises in sexual elektro, he seems unlikely to have any noticeable peers.

I am informed that, prior to making his extraordinary music, he hitch-hiked the country and stalked Radiohead's Thom Yorke. How could he have hitch-hiked anywhere? Who, in their right mind, would offer a lift to a giant Albino with a Welsh accent? Not that I am being remotely Albino-ist. (Johnny Winter is one of my favourite guitarists).

Anyway, the David Wrench album is stark, elegant, punch perfect, disco pounding and seems to emit the kind of sound that early New Order might have achieved if they had read the instructions to their sequencers and didn't employ the services of a bass player more perfectly suited to Metallica.

It is a hugely sexual music and carries me to a pristine white minimalist hotel, in Sweden, in winter, for some reason. Pure whiteness is everywhere, deeply cleansing and purifying. Being clean, fresh, elegant, clipped and contemporary, it seems to me to be the absolute musical and image antitheses of, say ... Motorhead.

Investigate him. Find out more on www.storm-music.com